I find it funny how we all like to complain about this type of shit when others do it but rarely do I see the same people who complain about this type of shit take the same responsibility for their own shitty actions. They end up doing the same shit that they complain about others doing. I'm not saying this to be rude or anything, rather it is just that posts like these always have me thinking about this kind of stuff.
There tends to be this sort of asymmetry when it comes to memories of being victims vs our memories of being perpetrators. We seem to recall more events in which we were victims compared to ones where we were perpetrators. People tend to feel more guilt when talking about things they did on accident or things that aren't their fault compared to when talking about the things they have done intentionally. When you are the one causing the harm, you probably don't tend to view what you did as being as harmful compared to the victims. All of this becomes even more messy irl because irl these situations can be much messier and not as simple as victims vs perpetrators. Despite this, these situations are still looked back at from a very white-and-black perspective.
I remember, back when I was around 13 or 14, staring out the window with my ex-stepmother and watching this bus driver talking to the police. He had hit a lady who was crossing the road. Something happened, though I don't remember what it was, but it ended up prompting my then-stepmother to talk about how some people just can't seem to take responsibility for their actions. I remember thinking to myself how hypocritical she sounded. This was the same woman who I have never once seen take responsibility for her awful actions towards others. She was abusive towards my dad, manipulative, and had a tendency to play the victim. She would cause all sorts of drama within our family but would always act like she was being forced into the middle of it. She once even said that my mom and dad kept on forcing me and her into the middle of their drama, even though she actively went out of her way to instigate most of the fights and drama between the two of them, actively inserting herself into the situation when she never had to. I thought that she was a hypocrite for saying that. The thing is, I now realize that I'm not that much better, nor do I think most people are.
People will harm others all the time but their biases blind them in a way. When I was in elementary school, I was a bully. The funny thing is that the kid who I went after I didn't even hate. I found him funny and overall had a neutral opinion of him prior to all of this. It wasn't until I made a new friend and had just joined their friend group that I started to become mean towards him because I was scared that if I didn't then they would kick me out of the in-group. Yet, I still saw myself as a "good person". I didn't see myself as a bully and didn't perceive myself as having done any harm. I either rarely recalled those events of cruelty or I would rationalize them in my head, making things from my perspective feel justified. It was not until sometime around middle school, while at a new school with very different friends, did the shittiness of my past actions actually start to hit me. Even then, I would still find myself fighting the urge to downplay them.
At the same time, there were points during elementary school where I witnessed others doing the same thing. They would be the perpetrator in the situation but they wouldn't view it that way. They would often downplay the harm of their actions and sometimes would even try to justify them. I once confronted a kid who picking on one of his peers and when I told him that he was being a bully he looked at me with this confused facial expression and said that he wasn't a bully. It was like he couldn't comprehend why anyone would think he was one. When my friends stopped hanging out with me, even after defending them when the person I was arguing with was accusing them of stuff, they didn't see anything wrong with what they did. They would act like it was weird that I grew to become upset at them because they would only hang out with me for a little bit until that person came along and then they would ditch me and leave me all by myself. People usually tend to better recognize situations in which they are victims compared to situations where they are the ones engaging in wrongdoings. Of course, this isn't the case with everyone but it seems to be a common trend that occurs in most people to varying degrees.
He will view his actions differently because he is looking at the situation from his perspective. From his POV, what he did to you wasn't that bad while from your POV, as the victim of his actions, it was that bad. It is likely that you have done the same shit before, even if you don't remember it or try to deny it.
Sometimes these things happen because we are trying to preserve this particular image of ourselves that we have in our heads without realizing it, while other times it happens because of differences in perspective. Being a victim of some sort of situation will likely elicit more negative emotions, making those memories more salient compared to those where you were the perpetrator.
Along with that, slightly unrelated, but you are making a lot of assumptions about his life and experiences but you aren't him. It's easy to say "Their life is definitely easier than mine" when looking at it from an outsider's perspective. It's not like you know about all of his traumatic experiences and hardships, let alone are you the same as him in the physical sense. Some people are more sensitive to adverse events than others, hence why two people can have similar trauma to one another but one person might be more resilient to those experiences compared to the other person, partly because of biological differences between the two individuals.
Who knows? Maybe everything I said here was just a reflection of my unknowingly projecting my own guilt and experiences onto others, maybe what I'm saying is the truth, or maybe it's a mix of both. This post is kind of just a series of nonsensical thoughts that I tried to organize into something comprehensible and I don't think that I did too good of a job at it. Then again, I'm not great at explaining shit.
Anyways, smell ya later!
